Does SEO Boil Down to Site Crawlability and Content Quality? - Whiteboard&nbspFriday

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

We all know that keywords and links alone no longer cut it as a holistic SEO strategy. But there's still plenty outside our field who try to "boil SEO down" to a naively simplistic practice - one that isn't representative of what SEOs need to do to succeed. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand champions the art and science of SEO and offers insight into how very broad the field really is.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm going to try and tackle a question that, if you're in the SEO world, you probably have heard many, many times from those outside of the SEO world.

I thought a recent question on Quora
phrased it perfectly. This question actually had quite a few people who'd seen it. Does SEO boil down to making a site easily crawlable and consistently creating good, relevant content?

Oh, well, yeah, that's basically all there is to it. I mean why do we even film hundreds of Whiteboard Fridays?

In all seriousness, this is a fair question, and I can empathize with the people asking it, because when I look at a new practice, I think when all of us do, we try and boil it down to its basic parts. We say, "Well, I suppose that the field of advertising is just about finding the right audience and then finding the ads that you can afford that are going to reach that target audience, and then making ads that people actually pay attention to."

Well, yes and no. The advertising field is, in fact, incredibly complex. There are dramatic numbers of inputs that go into it.

You could do this with field after field after field. Oh, well, building a car must just mean X. Or being a photographer must just mean Y.

These things are never true. There's always complexity underneath there. But I understand why this happens.

We have these two things. In fact, more often, I at least hear the addition of keyword research in there, that being a crawl-friendly website, having good, relevant content, and doing your keyword research and targeting, that's all SEO is. Right? The answer is no.

This is table stakes. This is what you have to do in order to even attempt to do SEO, in order to attempt to be in the rankings to potentially get search traffic that will drive valuable visits to your website. Table stakes is very different from the art and science of the practice. That comes because good, relevant content is rarely, if ever, good enough to rank competitively, because crawl friendly is necessary, but it's not going to help you improve any rankings. It's not going to help you in the competitive sense. You could be extremely crawl friendly and rank on page ten for many, many search terms. That would do nothing for your SEO and drive no traffic whatsoever.

Keyword research and targeting are also required certainly, but so too is ongoing maintenance of these things. This is not a fire and forget strategy in any sense of the word. You need to be tracking those rankings and knowing which search terms and which pages, now that "not provided" exists, are actually driving valuable visits to your site. You've got to be identifying new terms as those come out, seeing where your competition is beating you out and what they've done. This is an ongoing practice.

It's the case that you might say, "Okay, all right. So I really need to create remarkable content." Well, okay, yes, content that's remarkable helps. It does help you in SEO, but only if that remarkability also yields a high likelihood of engagement and sharing.

If your remarkability is that you've produced something wonderful that is incredibly fascinating, but no one particularly cares about, they don't find it especially more useful, or they do find it more useful, but they're not interested in sharing it, no one is going to help amplify that content in any way—privately, one to one, through email, or directing people to your website, or linking to you, or sharing socially. There's no amplification. The media won't pick it up. Now you've kind of lost. You may have remarkable content, but it is not the kind of remarkable that performs well for SEO.

The reason is that links are still a massive, massive input into rankings. So anything—this word is going to be important, I'm going to revisit it—anything that promotes or inhibits link growth helps or hurts SEO. This makes good sense when you think about it.

But SEO, of course, is a competitive practice. You can't fire and forget as we talked about. Your competition is always going to be seeking to catch up to you or to one up you. If you're not racing ahead at the right trajectory, someone will catch you. This is the law of SEO, and it's been seen over and over and over again by thousands and thousands of companies who've entered the field.

Okay, I realize this is hard to read. We talked about SEO being anything that impacts potential links. But SEO is really any input that engines use to rank pages. Any input that engines use to rank pages goes into the SEO bucket, and anything that people or technology does to influence those ranking elements is what the practice of SEO is about.

That's why this field is so huge. That's why SEO is neuropsychology. SEO is conversion rate optimization. SEO is social media. SEO is user experience and design. SEO is branding. SEO is analytics. SEO is product. SEO is advertising. SEO is public relations. The fill-in-the-blank is SEO if that blank is anything that affects any input directly or indirectly.

This is why this is a huge field. This is why SEO is so complex and so challenging. This is also why, unfortunately, when people try to boil SEO down and put us into a little bucket, it doesn't work. It doesn't work, and it defeats the practice. It defeats the investments, and it works against all the things that we are working toward in order to help SEO.

When someone says to you on your team or from your client, they say, "Hey, you're doing SEO. Why are you telling us how to manage our Facebook page?

Why are you telling us who to talk to in the media? Why are you telling us what changes to make to our branding campaigns or our advertising?" This is why. I hope maybe you'll send them this video, maybe you'll draw them this diagram, maybe you'll be able to explain it a little more clearly and quickly.

With that, I hope we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Imagine that now with lots of circles around, each circle being a factor that influences SEO. The closer to the center is each circle the higher the impact on SEO. THAT would be a very useful infographic for our SEO efforts.

Rand, thanks for the great video -- this is a lot that needs to be said.

Personally, I once boiled "SEO" down to this:

“SEO” is a slang term for the results of doing an ongoing collection of best practices in areas including web development, content creation, social media, and PR that:

- Help search engines to crawl, understand, index, rank, and display a website in search results

- Build a website’s online brand over time so that it deserves to rank highly in organic search

- Guide the resulting traffic down a desired conversion path.

You do not “SEO” something. SEO is not a “bag of tricks.” You do not “do” SEO.

I'm curious to hear peoples' thoughts on that "definition" -- though I'm sure the debate over the definition of "SEO" will never end. The more that "SEO" blogs cover an increasing number of topics, the more that "SEO" as a term will die. A term that means everything means nothing. In the end, I think good "SEO" is just increasingly just becoming good "digital marketing." And as more and more human activity moves online, "digital marketing" will just become "marketing."

Excellent overview of why SEO is more than just creating great content and making sure on-page SEO best practices are implemented. Will be sharing this video with my peers who just quite don't understand :)

This is the best explanation of SEO I have ever seen, and even though most of my clients, friends, etc... will still not "get it"... It kicks butt and I'm going to pass it around to anyone who asks questions about SEO (how's that for linkable and shareable).

Despite the immense wisdom of Rand's presentation, it is a case of myopic special pleading…that many sensible people outside this site will reject.

Cruel? Harsh? Mean? Yes, absolutely.

But not unjustified.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain.

I think every practitioner in every field forms a mental pyramid in which his speciality is at the top of the pyramid and every other practitioner -- if only they could see reason! -- plays a contributing role on lower levels of the pyramid.

That said, I agree with every word of Rand's presentation. I, myself, have refused assignments to "SEO my site" if I couldn't play a larger role.

But it seems to be that an equal case could be made that SEO is really a subset of marketing, CRO, strategy, user experience or other stuff.

I think the danger is in how we present Rand's content to clients. By all means, we need to educate them about how broad SEO is. But I think there is a real danger that it will be seen as a special pleading power plea to be the top dog.

So I would proceed with caution -- and perhaps not forward the video. If you've played nicely (or semi-nicely) with others, I'd emphasize that -- while slowly educating over time.

"every practitioner in every field forms a mental pyramid in which his speciality is at the top of the pyramid and every other practitioner"

It's just such a naive and immature standpoint.

The PR department which has been around for about 100 years is not going to let a teenybopper take control of their work. And the advertising and branding dept will eat them for breakfast before they give up control.

As Daniel says it will just come across as "a special pleading power plea to be the top dog."

While SEO maybe all of those things (PR, advertising, branding, social media, psychology design, UX etc) each one of those is a profession in itself,

For any SEO to claim expertise in any of them is quite frankly insulting and disrespectful of all the other professions.

Just because you do SEO work, doesn't mean you can't have an expertise in a broad array of other fields. SEO isn't something you learn at school, it's rarely someone's first job, you normally need to take one of many career paths to end up in an SEO position. You normally have to be an expert at at least one of the fields you mention to become an expert in SEO.

This concept shouldn't insult anyone.

You should read Rand's post on his own blog about "t-shaped marketers." Folks that fit this description normally make the best SEOs.

When I am pitching a new client, I always like to open with a similar sentiment around "any input engines use to rank pages, is SEO". Except I go for the comedy angle. For example, if I was pitching Moz, I would open with:

"Much like Rand at the Moz Christmas Party......SEO touches everything"

Like the simplicity yet complexity of it all. In the end all clients want is more business but before they can achieve this they need to understand the moving pieces. Often times this is one of the hardest things to explain to prospect who has been burned by bad SEO before.

OMG!! I am facing this problem with some clients but they do not understand the things. They understand what, I do not know :) but I got some confidence by watching your vedio. although problem will be remain same with the me :). Thank you so much Rand. I loved your whole definition about SEO.

I always like to explain internet marketing like it is a huge machine with a lot of interior moving parts and SEO being very close to the center of said parts. SEO keeps everything else moving like a well engineered machine. This WBF explains it so well! Very nice!

Thanks again Rand for this great piece of content. I find it funny to see how much I agree with you all the time. I'm having a hard time convincing (some) clients that I should know this and I should know that... but they just won't understand why any of that is relevant to SEO and therefore ignore me or forget about it. For instance: lots of my clients attend events, but they won't tell me they do. And then I usually find out about it through mentions. Or they've been sponsoring some organisation, which I accidently find out after I specifically asked them if they are into charity, sponsoring or any of that good stuff which can be really useful for linkbuilding. SEO is great but complex. Fun but difficult and moreover: way more than just a couple of things. Maybe some of my clients will be convinced after I show them this video from a highly authoritative website such as Moz.

You can take a brand new website, write the most amazing and thought provoking information known to man, and publish it in a crawl-able manner.

How long would it take before someone found it and clicked on it from a Google SERP? Probably a very long time, or at least MUCH, MUCH longer than if you had publicized it.

The reason is Google still can't adequately measure quality of content on a human level. They don't know if the article written by Billy Joe about NASCAR is as informative as the one written by Jeff Gordon. They have to involve many other metrics to make a best guess.

SEO is about everything, a totality of skills. Granted, yes, quality content makes it much easier, but there would not be Panda and Penguin if poor content did not heavily populate the top of the chain.

Really interesting post Rand,. Though being an SEO noob (I probably always will be!) I have never known it as only one aspect or another, I think its best to take each project as an individual case.

The wheel diagram reminds me (going back to my network administration days!) of what we would call a Layered Security Model. That is the security should not only be on the outside "skin" but made up of many layers at each level of interaction for the user.

A virus from a users machine (core of the onion) would circumvent all efforts on the perimeter for example. Such as maybe a visitor interacting with your brand at an un-optimized stage could circumvent all other efforts. Your post has made me wonder which other structural/logical models from other fields might apply to SEO concepts.

Like the Security Onion, relating this to SEO has really helped my think of this concept in terms I understand. Optimization or improvements should appear at many levels as we do not know from which attack vector the visitor will take... oh hang on I mean "which entry point the visitor will take" :-)

I think i might go and explore SEOnion a bit more! thanks for the post and inspiration!

Daniel, Mark - thanks for pointing this out. Rand makes some excellent points (as always), but in the end what brands care about is total online visibility, which is achieved through web presence optimization (WPO). SEO, important as it still is, is one component of WPO, which coordinates the efforts traditionally associated with SEO (keyword research, technical site architecture, on-page optimization, etc.) with those of other professionals in areas like social, PR, online advertising, and CRO. Does an ad affect SEO? No - but it does affect a brand's overall online visibility. Maximizing that visibility requires the coordinated efforts of experts in different areas, but no one area "owns" WPO.

You have pointed out a great point in this video that the SEOs are asked occasionally as to why they are interfering in the marketing campaigns and social media and other marketing plans. The thing that needs to be understood here is that no team can perform alone. It has to be a combined effort.

Yes, the content needs to be great, the titles need to be attractive and the social media needs to be attracting lots of traffic. However, when these things are combined with SEO and content analysis, it sure fetches much better result than a single team effort. I have seen the change personally and always promote collaboration of teams in my organization.

One of the better WBF I've seen in recent months, it's good to constantly review the underlying parameters in which we as SEOs work within. Rands interpretation seems to follow the general business trend in which EVERYTHING is marketing, which I generally subscribe to.

Well put. SEO is simply to us but is this mysteriously complex endeavor for most. We just need to make sure the customer grasps the basics of what we do and then get them more customers. The hard part is getting someone who was previously burned to trust.

Amazing Video Rand! Just bring it on because we love learning from you. I am always learning new things which I can always apply to my Nashville SEO skills. Thanks and looking forward to another video from you!

SEO is 101 marketing but it evolved. If we look at the extend P's of marketing everything Rand mentioned is need for a good SEO campaign. The problem is that it getting harder to get the high quality content amplified through the tidal wave of how to guides and charlatans giving crap advice mainly from networking groups. My company is boiling it down. Build the solid foundation and then using every channel available get that foundation out. I think most SME's focus on the forget and fire...

Don't you think, the past two WBF's have been very off the technical path which usually used to be earlier? Anyway, i was excited with the concept that you have mentioned regarding what all an SEO field encompasses. We are actually jack of all trades and need to be master of all these traits. Good one!!

Great! Thumbs up for this great White Board session. Now I understand the whole field of SEO. Earlier I thought of it as an option but it is very important for getting organic stuff. I also got to know that some of the things I did on my own were SEO in reality. Hah!

Great post Rand! so very true! and I think that potential clients would have a better understanding of what they were paying for if SEO proposals would include much more of the NON table stakes strategies and activities.

Rand, I have been a customer and huge follower of SEOMOZ for a very long time. To hear you today stress the complex environment in which SEO takes up was amazing.

As I prepare for a presentation myself today to a rather large client with no knowledge of what SEO is and the success it can bring to not any web portal but overall business exposure - this motivated me!

SEO to me is a field that is becoming harder and harder to define. It only works to its full capacity when everyone (and every channel) is contributing to the same goal.

This video / post is literally the perfect example of what you explained. It's highly shareable and valuable to all of us who have a hard time explaining why SEO isn't just content, keywords and crawlability.

One way I've convinced clients to buy into linkbuilding is with proper planning and seeding of the "awesome content" we plan to create. If you give yourself enough lead time, you can contact a variety of journalists and writers to get their feedback on the content before you spend the money to create it. Clients love this because it can save them time and money and journalists seem to like it too (I'm not a journalist so I can only guess why) and if they agree to write about it, we've proven the linkability of the content we've pitched to the client.

Journalists like it because they can silo it and seed it in between editorial calender events. The more you can hand them content the easier their job is and the more they like you.

I find that the first few articles are the hardest to push out, but once you have your little network of people that like your content you start to accelerate. I had a video get picked up by Car Throttle, whom has millions of followers, and because it went well they are happy to push new content.

It's so rewarding to develop content, have people like it, and get those links. It puts faith in the Google system.

I would also like to add that good SEOs also become the lead in any brainstorming session with the company. When presenting detailed competitive and market analytical data along with questions based around their business / marketing plans and objectives, In most cases the original SEO/SEM plan changes. We have the data and knowledge to get the client thinking out of the box and to realising new or unknown possibilities.

I joke sometimes but I truly feel a good SEO needs to posses many business and marketing skills on top of SEO.

But like a said, all credit to you and thanks for the post. I just wish others with a large following do the same. We need to start promoting our sector and show what good SEOs can do for a company.

All I can say is thank you Rand. It is a common problem, getting clients to understand SEO concepts... The videos to help to put into words and to reason a lot of the points we need to be able to address.

@Rand. A superb session of #wbf. Really breaks down the myth a lot of webmasters believe that SEO is all about creating quality content, making a crawl friendly website and undertake keyword research.

It is important to understand that these are the foundation points of SEO. Unless you have all these three in place you simply can't do SEO. Moreover, you need to create content that encourages more share and leads to higher engagement. SEO is definitely a much more broader term wherein various factors come into place such as Design and development, social media performance, link building and more. Anything that leads to higher rankings and more brand awareness is SEO.

Some really interesting points, and the more I think about it, SEO is actually growing more than ever before, it's just not quite as we have recognised it previouskt. We all started with the basics (meta's, titles, couple of links), and since those tactics are now surrounded with so many other strategies, it's easy to stop and forget that arguably all forms of internet marketing boil down to SEO in one way, shape or form. PPC builds your brand (social shares, mentions, interaction, potential links), social media builds your brand (social signals), affiliate marketing includes mentions and builds the brand etc.

SEO is almost turning into the overarching state for digital marketing, everything needs to feed into it in order for it to be a success, and it's less like it's own discipline in the same way some of the other channels are.

Great WBF! Firstly, I just love the way you explained the definition of SEO and it's complexity. I have some reservations over your this statement, "crawl friendly is necessary, but it's not going to help you improve any rankings."

When the site is in development phase, we all make sure that Java Scripts and other languages should not make the web page too complex so it can't be readable for the crawlers. If the Crawl friendliness is not the ranking factor, why people have to worry about? Crawibility is something that exclusively concerned to Search Engines and if they aren't giving us any kind of edge why should we help them?

Rand, I love this WBF so much! This makes it so easy to explain to customers that SEO and the advancement of a company is not a once-done effort. Just as once your car accelerates to a certain speed, you can't then say "oh this is fast enough" and let off the gas and expect to stay at that same speed. You need to have constant effort to continue making gains and moving forward. I can't wait for another episode of "Rand's Rants" :)

I like your analogy of photography. All that you need is a camera and a good eye! right! You could read 1,000 books on how to have a good eye and still not take good pictures. And aside from the question of "good for whom," there is the further issue of buying a camera - there is only 1000 to choose from!

Very interesting indeed! I am involved in some training that tells us that the basics of SEO are pretty much the end all be all of SEO... this being unique relevant quality content, good keyword research using low hanging fruit keywords and on page optimization.

It does also include sharing to certain social media, but it pretty much steers away from quality backlinks, which Google itself has said they are steering away from more and more.

For someone just starting out in this business, it sure makes things a bit tough to figure out. -RDub

However, did I detect a bit of (dare I say) hostile undertones in today's glorious episode? Perhaps walked out of a frustrating meeting and straight into the film studio... :)

Of course I could just be projecting based on my own experiences... but at the end of the day I'm right there with ya Rand!

"Yes, it is my job to provide you advice on every aspect of your marketing strategy because SEO is a foundational set of considerations, principals and processes that should influence everything you do... that's why I make the big bucks." (mic drop, exit stage left)

Very good answer to a common question, I get this a lot from prospect clients the one that I love the most is "So, SEO is basically your Onpage SEO, content and links?"

Yes, this is a simple way of explaining to clients and outsiders but once you start to discuss the areas in detail people realise that it is not as clear cut (as you explained). I would say that the circle diagram that you drew would represent 30% of the initial stage of research in an SEO strategy.

Rand, I (literally) couldn't have explained it any better. I just sent this to a client who was mulling over using a free/cheap online site builder versus a professional with development and marketing experience. I don't know yet if I will get their business, but certainly someone in the industry will.

I am however starting to dislike the use of SEO to define our industry, because the phrase itself has such a twisted meaning versus what it was 4 years ago. We rebranded to Digital Marketing, which I think changes the perception of what we actually do.

Pitching SEO now almost requires a complete reeducation on what it entails. Digital Marketing allows for a fresh explanation that makes better sense - at least that's the reception I've gotten lately.

I love this WBF! It was Awesome, One thing I do find upsetting is when certain SEO Pros call them selfs experts, There is no way to be an expert of such a huge industry, Everyday you learn new skills to help your campaign impmove. It takes insight, Analysis, Real Data, and to top it off all of the other segments it expands to PR, UX/UI, Social.

Deserves my #BOOM for the day - every Friday Rand. Like anything that's valuable - Strong SEO practices are very complex and involve many facets when well polished and executed (like a diamond) - Create amazing results. I've come to accept there are:

3 types of opinion on SEO from business owners or managers:

1-SHaters: They do not understand nor want anything called SEO. These folks say these things: "We just need to tell a great story" "We just need great content" "We just need to update our banners" "We just need to build a social community" "We just need to push our brand" "We need more advertising" 55% of the population

2-SLovers: They know the value but in addition to their business they want to do it themselves. These ego driven folks (and budget conscious) think they can do everything themselves. Kind of like having the admin team lay carpet - ends up being messy and a waste of time. These folks don't get "You get what you pay for" - save a penny lose a dime is where they live. 40% of the population.

3-SMarties: They are good at their business but understand they can't know everything. They know a good SEO is valuable and needed for success in the long term of their business. They trust those that can prove results and will tell them (pay them) to make it happen and show me the expected results vs where we are. 5% of the population.

Tell me how I can do better on my national memory foam mattress site @ eBed.com or on my Google Plus Page.

The best SEOs know which tools are needed to improve any given website.

So, to do good SEO you need to know about the various types of tools and then be able to look at a website and pick the ones that can best be applied to obtain maximum benefit out of the cost. They gotta understand your business model too!

I think that too many SEOs are selling the "tool of the day" or the "tools that they got" and not really looking at (or might not even understand) the current state of the website and the biz model opportunities that are out there.

The bottom line on this is that the SEOs who have an overview of the tools and the ability to do assessments are undervalued and not used enough. And, some webmasters or SEOs without those abilities grab the tool of the day or the tool that they got and wear it out when they really need something else.

Who are these SEOs that have an overview of the tools, the ability to assess a site and plug that into your biz model? They are the ones that you want for launching a site or directing the work on an existing site. Kinda like a general contractor for a commercial building.

This is the only industry that has never bored me. I have been angry. I have been frustrated. I have been quite happy. But I have never been bored.

It's good to see someone else applying utility to their daily practice, diminishing returns and all. A general interest in economics is most helpful in this field. Do you visit mises.org from time to time?

It is definitely necessary to understand the business model and how it may be improved. Once again, the SEO field bleeds into something else; BI. It can be as simple as knowing that a call center isn't picking up the phone. Or it can be as complicated as ferreting out the problems from PO to shipping. (I get a little too deep sometimes and figure out HR issues.)

I generally stick to the tools that work for the situation. The most valuable, and often used, are my grey bits augmented by experience. THE. NEXT. BIG. THING. often comes and goes with a whimper, I have my brain and experience for as long as I live.

Also, you asked a very good question in regard to finding solid SEOs. Too often it's a; "Look at me!" game that isn't effective enough. There's a ton of them out there that produce solid results. But they never take, or have, the time to promote themselves.

I would probably do something comparable to the GA Partners program. It would be interesting if one included input from their peers. I'm pretty sure that facet would turn into a popularity contest. Something like the Moz Q&A model is good, but that's weighted toward producing blog posts. Though I think the model is fair enough.

I think that is a great idea. Understanding the sites current traffic is really important. It tells you what's working, what isn't and often if the site has experienced a Panda, Penguin, etc. problem. If you apply SEO to a site that is running at 50% effectiveness because of Panda then the return on the SEO spend is fractional.

Many here is London are more drawn to the title "search marketing expert", rather than a "SEO expert". Of course both to a certain degree mean the same. I guess there is a certain stigma attached to SEO, but ultimately it means the same thing. Nice summing up Rand - I was a little anxious that this Whiteboard was going to be on "European Fashion" :).